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On the death of his godfather, the Earl of Surrey, Edmund was granted the Earl's lands north of the Trent, primarily in Yorkshire. In 1359 he joined his father King Edward III on an unsuccessful military expedition to France and in 1361 was made a knight of the Garter. In 1362, at the age of twenty-one, he was created Earl of Cambridge by King Edward.[1]

Some argue that Edmund had little aptitude for war, but he took part in several military expeditions to France in the 1370s, and when his tomb was opened in the 1870s his skeleton showed evidence of wounds that strongly suggests his martial abilities have been under-rated. In 1369 he brought a retinue of 400 men-at-arms and 400 archers to serve with John Hastings, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, on campaign in Brittany and Angoulême. The following year he first joined Pembroke again on an expedition to relieve the fortress of Belle Perche and then accompanied the Black Prince on the campaign which resulted in the siege and sack of Limoges. In 1375 he sailed with Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, to relieve Brest, but after some initial success a truce was declared.

In 1381 he led an abortive expedition to join with the Portuguese in attacking Castile, but after months of indecisiveness a peace was again declared (between Spain and Portugal) and Edmund had to lead his malcontented troops home.

He was appointed Constable of Dover Castle and Warden of the Cinque Ports on 12 June 1376 and held office until 1381. He acted as Keeper of the Realm in 1394/95 when Richard II campaigned in Ireland and presided over Parliament in 1395. He was also keeper of the realm in 1396 during the king's brief visit to France to collect his child-bride Isabella. The Duke was left as Custodian of the Realm in the summer of 1399 when Richard II departed for an extended campaign in Ireland. In late June the exiled Henry Bolingbroke landed at Bridlington in Yorkshire. He raised an army to resist Bolingbroke, then decided instead to join him, for which he was well rewarded. He thereafter remained loyal to the new Lancastrian regime as Bolingbroke overthrew Richard II to become King Henry IV.

After Isabella's death in 1392, Langley married his cousin Joan Holland, whose great-grandfather Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent, was the half-brother of Langley's grandfather Edward II; she and Langley were thus both descended from King Edward I. The marriage produced no children.

As a son of the sovereign, Edmund bore the arms of the sovereign, differenced by a label argent, on each point three torteaux.[5]

Edmund, the 1st Duke of York is a major character in Shakespeare's Richard II. In the play, Edmund resigns his position as an adviser to his nephew, Richard II, but is reluctant to betray the king. He eventually agrees to side with Bolingbroke to help him regain the lands Richard confiscated after the death of Bolingbroke's father, John of Gaunt. After Bolingbroke deposes Richard and is crowned Henry IV, Edmund discovers a plot by his son, Aumerle to assassinate the new king. Edmund exposes the plot, but his wife Isabella convinces Henry to pardon her son.

From an account of the exhumation of Edmund's corpse in 1877: "The skull belonging to the male skeleton had a sloping forehead. The chin and lower jaw were powerfully developed. The front teeth were small in size and crammed together, and many of the back teeth lost. Still the retention of the front teeth and the good development of the lower jaw and chin, coupled with the length and breadth of the facial region, must have given a commanding expression to the old man who owned this skull... A piece of coarse textile fabric, with some hair of a greyish-red color adhering to it, was found with the skull. He was from 5' 5" to 5' 7" in height."[6]